Random Happenings: An Update

Hello, everyone! As you know, I have been on a break from this blog. Just wanted to fill you in on some of the things that have been going on during this hiatus (and until I get my mailing list up and running).
This past weekend, my wife and I celebrated our twenty-second wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, Honey! Love you!

Yes, we married as toddlers.

Okay, not really. But we’re still young! (Even if our kids don’t think so!). To celebrate, we had a nice dinner out, and capped off the weekend with a screening of Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. As my blogging friend, Rob Shepherd says, the line for the Academy Award begins behind Mr. Day-Lewis. His performance is that good. Though there are a couple of battle scenes, this is a character-driven drama. (Which means: thank God Spielberg directed it, and not Michael Bay). 😉

In sadder news, our female Maltese, Snowball, passed away at the age of ten last week. As you know, pets become part of the family. The hardest parts of this–aside from her actual death–have been trying to help out six-year-old

daughter understand this, and then watching our surviving male, Shadow, come to terms with it in his doggie way. (He barks all night, sits forlorn at the door, waiting for for his buddy, tail between his legs). He feels it too.

To be fair, my fourteen year-old son offered us the entire contents to his savings so we could take Shadow in for a checkup. “To make sure he’s not sick, too.”

The brightest news was of course my anniversary, but something which provided enough of a diversion to get my thoughts off of Snowball (for a time), was my participation (for the first time) in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in November (the equivalent of a roughly 200-page novel); I’m about 1/5th the way there (closing in on 10,000 words). I hope to be finished by the end of the year, and then being the process of revision.

I harbor no real hopes of publication, but cherish the experience.

My memoir sits at about 25,000-ish words; I will resume work on it after the other book is done (it, too, will need to be substantially revised, and rewritten).

In the end, if neither ever sees the light of day, they will have been written, their stories told. I will not stop writing, but move on to other works (ideas are percolating/festering) now.

Lastly, I’ve been invited to join the Midnight Garden, a Facebook group created by Tosca Lee in support of her forthcoming book, Iscariot: A Novel of Judas. For my money, she is one of the best novelists writing today (Christian, or otherwise). I’ve read a pre-release version of Iscariot, and it is stunning, enthralling, and frankly left me shaken. (You can search the blog for my review). It is available for preorder wherever books are sold.

That’s about all for now. I will check in from time-to-time.

Chad

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randomlychad

Christ-follower, husband, dad, blogger, reader, writer, movie buff, introvert, desert-dweller, omnivore, gym rat. May, or may not, have a burgeoning collection of Darth Vader t-shirts. Can usually be found drinking protein shakes, playing with daughter, working out with his son, or hanging out with his wife. Makes a living playing with computers.Subscribe to RandomlyChad by Email

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